Home Visit: Part One

We just finished with our very first home visit (literally 15 minutes ago or less) and it went very well.  Our new case worker is really sweet and very down to earth.  I think we both felt at ease within seconds of her coming into the house.  I was very surprised at how little she looked at the house, considering it is a home study, but she is having us email her pictures of it for our file.  She checked all the rooms but didn't poke around in any of the drawers like some of the horror stories we've heard.  Instead, we just sat down at the dining room table and chatted.  I was amazed at how the interview questions she had to document seemed to come about more like a conversation instead of a check list.  It actually makes me look forward to our second visit with her which will be next Friday at 1pm.  Looks like things are finally moving along! 

Drumroll Please...

We not only have a new agency and a new and improved caseworker, but we also have (cue drumroll please).....a home visit date!!! Mama S got the call this morning to schedule the first of two home visits for our home study. I had to call the caseworker back to confirm one of three dates she had offered us, and it took all I had not to cry out of sheer joy and relief. The date is set for June 22, 2011 at 2:30pm, nearly 6 months to the day after our home study was first assigned to the original agency. I'm so excited that I almost feel we should have a "save the date" card made for posterity! There's much to be done still, but at least we have a set date with an exact time and a professional caseworker who's willing to work with us. What a breath of fresh air!

And Here We Go Again!

I haven't posted in a while mainly because there really has been nothing to post, at least not until now. Our frustration over how ridiculously long our home study has been finally came to a head about two weeks ago when I placed a call to T, who as usual apologized for not calling me, blah, blah, blah then promised to call me that afternoon. I haven't heard from her since. Mama S and I waited for a week before giving in and calling D, her supervisor, and by the end of last week STILL hadn't heard from her either. Finally, the straw broke our preverbal camel's back, and I broke down and called the adoption coordinator who assigns home studying agencies. I received a call back from her today and detailed to her our home study journey thus far. To say she was appalled would be an understatement. Our home study was assigned January 25th and as of today, June 6th, NOTHING has been done. To add insult to injury, the hour long panic over a supposedly "lost" file was completely unnecessary, as the adoption coordinator had given the agency a COPY of our original file and had the original under lock and key with her, something, she said, D would have known but never told me. On top of it all, it turns out the adoption packet we filled out should have never been done by us in the first place. It was the responsibility of the caseworker to use it as a guide for our home visit, and the agency we had been dealing with had a reputation for being lazy and making their clients do it themselves, only to copy and paste the documents into their adoption reports. The 20 minute conversation resulted in a new home study agency assignment for us (to one with a great community reputation) and an investigation into the rest of the files handled by the agency in question. It was a slight comfort to know that we weren't the first ones this has happened to, but we will hopefully be the last after their investigation. Hopefully other families won't go through the same headache that we have. If nothing else, all the fighting we've had to do has proven that we REALLY want to be parents (as if there was a doubt!) and hopefully we will now be on the road to completing our home study once and for all.